Teaching a Man to Fish

I’m at the Whole Foods in West Bloomfield buying Budweiser. I’m going fishing. Two college friends, Cameron and Patrick, have joined me for the excursion.

They are on opposite ends of the competency spectrum. Patrick is generally reliable and will be our fishing guide; Cameron is slap-stick clumsy and would struggle in retrieving fish from a fishmonger. Cameron looks up to Patrick like a father; Patrick becomes frustrated with Cameron with the impatience of a drunk dad who’s teaching a simple task to his simple son. They are best friends. Cameron never learned how to fish as a kid. He’s eager to learn, and Patrick will show him how. 

We’re late. It’s already midday. Cameron stayed up late watching Reels (the other kind of reel). Now I’m spending too much time trying on discounted jeans at Dunham’s Sports instead of buying fishing tackle. We have no idea where to go or what to buy, but we want to catch dinner. Throwing filet knives and a new cutting board in our cart reveals the wishful thinking of complete novices.

Our next stop is The Bait Shop in Waterford. A staff member offers some help. He’s tall, tanned, and handsome. He looks like a surfer, but with an un-ironic mullet and an enthusiasm for fish. He sells me a non-resident fishing license, which is good for a day and only costs $10. We grab some nightcrawlers and lures, including a tray of gold blade spinners for trout. Alex shows us a good fishing spot nearby. He drops me a pin on Google Maps.

It’s in Rochester Hills, more specifically in Christian Hills, and in a park named Innovation Hills, where Alex tells us to leave our car. We’ll then have to trek some ways to get to his marked location, which is a deep meander in the Clinton River, where the water pools under the shade of overhanging branches.

For an area that is trying hard to market its elevation (hills, hills, hills), the place is about as hilly as an ice rink. It’s not only men who lie about their height online. It’s over 92 degrees. 

Before we enter the mosquito-infested marsh, we put on DEET and decide to spool fishing line on our new reels. Patrick prepares his rod first. Then I hold the spool while Cameron tries to get his gear ready.

Despite watching Patrick demonstrate the simple procedure in two minutes, Cameron fails for over half an hour. He first can’t get the line to grasp his reel, so it keeps slipping instead of spooling. He then struggles to put the bail arm in the right position. Finally overcoming these two challenges, Cameron tangles the line into a Gordian Knot and resorts to cutting, thereby having to restart the whole process.

Every time Cameron fails, he pathetically sighs and looks at his equipment in bewilderment, like it’s magical, not mechanical.

Patrick and I apathetically watch on. We’re also sweating profusely, like leaky faucets. It’s now after 4 p.m. We’ve spent 45 minutes in this parking lot. Eventually Patrick gets angry at Cameron, and we start hiking.  

For the next 20 minutes, we walk in complete silence. It’s too hot to communicate. We stroll along a highway, then stumble through some brush, trudge across a marshland, and ultimately wade into knee-deep water. Despite the feeling of being in the wilderness, subdivisions surround us. The flow of the river and the sounds of birds might have given the illusion of going deep into nature, but any bucolic fantasy is overwhelmed by the noise of traffic.

But we’re here.

And all the earthworms are dead.

Nothing is squirming in our bait box. The nightcrawlers were baked alive in their Styrofoam container while sitting on the black asphalt of the parking lot waiting for Cameron. But perhaps for the worms, from their eyeless point of view, it was a better fate than being swallowed one bite at a time. They’ve turned from rich brown to cream white. The little guys are now firm to the touch. Hopefully the fish enjoy their bait al dente.

We stick the beer in the river to cool down and begin casting. Patrick immediately catches a little trout. It’s small and Patrick releases it. I don’t bother getting my camera. We are no doubt going to catch a lot more, and bigger ones too, if in the first few minutes we already have one.

Of course, it’s the only trout we catch all day. For the rest of the afternoon, we only catch bluegill and pumpkinseed sunfish, and something that’s maybe a mottled or slimy sculpin. I would have consulted the Michigan Fishing Regulations handbook at the time, but Patrick was using it to roll a blunt.

Nowhere in the booklet are there any references to snakes, yet two serpents have slithered beside my feet, underwater, in the bed of the Clinton River. I’d like to pretend they didn’t scare me.

Fishing is a slimy activity, and every step progressively adds a little more goo or gunk. You first have to finger through worms that are covered in a mucus that helps them move. As you pierce their squishy flesh with the hook’s point and barb, the worm’s castings spill out and soil your hands. Fish also have their scales coated in a slippery secretion that, after catching one, makes them hard to hold. You must grip the animal with authority as it violently undulates from side to side. It wants the freedom that you must deny. Eating is another story. You cut the fish’s gills to bleed it out, then disembowel it. This prevents the flesh from spoiling.

Many virgin hunters or fishermen imagine their conscience wrestling with killing, but forget that their disgust instinct will also be tested. And overcoming the repulsion to ickiness, which is an innate response to avoid sickness and disease, is maybe even harder than the moral tension. Killing requires callousness toward other living things, getting filthy requires callousness toward oneself. That’s why skills such as fishing teach far more than simply how to catch dinner. There are spiritual lessons here in these muddy waters.

When Cameron gingerly fondled his first catch, trying to unhook the barb, the sunfish wiggled hysterically. He screamed like a little girl who found a spider in her bedroom. We bullied him until he grabbed the little sunfish with his bare hands. It’s not his fault. 

Cameron tragically lost his father at a very early age. He lived his childhood and adolescence without angling on small ponds in the summertime dusk. He’s now 30. But life is about teaching yourself lessons. Because even when the metaphorical torch isn’t being passed, from father to son, it’s also never been easier to learn: YouTube is everyone’s daddy. 

Most boys today don’t have rites-of-passage, or initiations, or even proper education. Military service, fraternity membership, and bullying are at all-time lows—the whole notion of hazing is barely hanging on by a thread. Development seems to be intentionally delayed. That’s why many men are stuck as boys. Growing up requires getting dirty, being disagreeable, taking risks that terrify others.

Such an initiation is a process, not a single step. Like the butterflies on this river, which go through an ugly and long metamorphosis, the transformation from boyhood to manhood isn’t always easy. But it’s always worth it.

Cameron went fishing again the next day.

Mitch Miller is an adventure writer and conflict journalist. He’s more than happy to join in on any extreme activity, and can be reached at mitchenjoyer@gmail.com. Follow him on X at @funtimemitch.